Tuesday

The two cases against Aliquippa Assistant Police Chief Joseph Perciavalle will proceed to trial after a lengthy preliminary hearing Tuesday.

BEAVER — The two cases against Aliquippa Assistant Police Chief Joseph Perciavalle will proceed to trial after a lengthy preliminary hearing Tuesday.

Another Aliquippa officer, Sgt. Kenneth Watkins, pleaded the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying at a preliminary hearing for Perciavalle on Tuesday afternoon.

District Judge Edward Howe dismissed the disseminating explicit sexual materials to minors charge and unlawful contact with a minor charge, both felonies, but held the misdemeanor corruption of minors charge for court.

Perciavalle, 44, is accused of sending an inappropriate video in a group message that included Lauren Watkins, daughter of Kenneth Watkins, who was 17 at the time the video was sent.

In the second case, Howe held the felony charge of intercepting communications after Perciavalle allegedly illegally recorded a conversation with Aliquippa Police Chief Don Couch. Perciavalle has been on paid administrative leave from the Aliquippa Police Department since June.

Kenneth Watkins was the first witness called to the stand but invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when asked by Assistant District Attorney Jorden Colalella about the group text message with Perciavalle and Watkins' family. Watkins said he feared retaliation from the district attorney’s office.

Lauren Watkins, who is now 18, testified that she felt she was forced by county detectives to write a statement against Perciavalle regarding the video, which showed a woman urinating while on a playground swing.

Lauren Watkins said Perciavalle is a close family friend and she considers him an uncle. The video was sent in a group message that also included Watkins’ parents.

“It was sent on accident,” Lauren Watkins said.

She said she didn’t watch the video or reply in the group text message. The first time she saw the video is when two county detectives showed it to her after it was discovered on her phone during a search, Lauren Watkins testified.

Beaver County Detective Robert Heberle testified that he found the video while searching Lauren's phone in connection with the Rachael DelTondo homicide case. Lauren Watkins is considered a possible witness in the DelTondo homicide.

In the group text message, Stephanie Watkins, Lauren’s mother, said “My daughter is too young to see this,” Heberle testified. Perciavalle responded by saying “smh” and “she is 21.”

Lauren Watkins, who graduated from high school a year early, was a freshman in college at the time the video was sent.

However, Heberle testified that Perciavalle said in an interview later with detectives that he knew Lauren Watkins was 17.

While searching Perciavalle’s phone on a search warrant in June, Heberle also discovered a 39-minute long recording of a conversation between Chief Couch and Perciavalle that seemed to be happening in a police car while the two were on duty, Heberle said at the hearing.

Heberle testified that the recording seemed suspicious to him because at no time did Couch indicate he knew he was being recorded, nor did Perciavalle say he was recording the conversation.

According to Pennsylvania wiretap laws, before a conversation can be recorded, all parties involved have to be made aware of the recording and have given permission for it to occur.

Heberle said police officers especially are trained to give a preamble on recordings to show the recording is being done legally.

The recording was made March 2, the same day state police served a search warrant on the offices at the Aliquippa city building, Couch testified. Couch said the Aliquippa officers were discussing the raid when he got to the police station that day, and Perciavalle seemed to know more about the investigation than anyone else.

“When I realized he [Perciavalle] knew so much, I told him ‘let’s go for a ride.’ I wanted to find out what he knew,” Couch said at the hearing.

The two rode around and talked in Couch’s police vehicle, at one point ending up parked in the city building’s public parking lot, Couch testified.

In the recording, which was played in its entirety during the three-hour long preliminary hearing, Perciavalle and Couch are heard discussing the police department, the Aliquippa police pension fund, City Manager Sam Gill and other personal topics.

Couch said they discussed things in the car that they would not have discussed publicly.

Defense Attorney Steve Townsend argued that Couch had no reasonable expectation for privacy in the conversation as part of it may have taken place in a public parking lot.

He also argued that Perciavalle was exempt from the wiretap laws under an exception in the statute that allows recording without permission when there is a reasonable suspicion a person may commit a crime of violence, including witness intimidation.

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